Can you play me a memory
by WaltzMatildah
Summary: An attempt to give Reed a backstory worthy of a Seattle Grace employee, and to give Alex an actual friend. Christmas Eve angst abounds.


Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

**Can you play me a memory (I'm not really sure how it goes...)**

by Waltzmatildah

* * *

"The same again, thanks." She lifts her fingers from the brand emblazoned bar runner, brings them back down onto the damp mat rhythmically, and with a soft thrum. Tinsel, taped awkwardly to the glass lips of the stacked shelves in front of her, glitters mutely in the low light, as though the people seated, sentry like on the cracked vinyl stools beside her, actually care that it's Christmas Eve.

Though she very much doubts that they do.

Blinking slowly then, she shivers, remembers to breathe. Ghosts of christmas past.

She allows herself a brief smile, to no-one, to everyone. Her only concession to the occasion. The scotch burns at the back of her throat, blazes a hiking trail through her insides. She doesn't even _like_ scotch so she guesses, bitterly, that her drink of choice for the evening is probably concession number two. _Damn_.

Despite a ban that's been in place for years, the air remains heavy with cigarette smoke, as though the tar and stale nicotine are so ingrained into the walls, the floor, the furnishings of the bar that no amount of days and months and years could ever begin to dilute it.

If only life were like that.

There's a guy nursing an acoustic guitar in the back corner. Sometimes he just plays, sometimes he sings along, a deep, melodic voice that numbs her to her fingertips. She knows who it is. When she'd walked in and noticed him she'd considered turning around and walking straight back out again.

But she's not here for him, no matter what conclusion he launches to, so she stays, orders her scotch, doesn't even bother to feel surprised.

The bar is mostly empty. She only comes once a year and it's almost always empty to her, even when she's shoulder to shoulder. A weight settles on the stool next to her, a familiar face reflected suddenly in the tinsel framed mirror panelling opposite.

"Fancy seeing you here..." he says, and she watches the reflection's mouth move.

She snorts and drains what remains of her drink; masks a grimace behind false bravado and sneer, "Says you, _Mr. Piano Man_..."

"Piano Man? Whatever-"

She turns her chin slightly to face him, raises one eyebrow, "...maybe not _tonight_." He doesn't finish his indignant rebuttal and she likes to think that maybe her presence at the bar has unsettled him somewhat.

Like his has done to her.

* * *

"You're pretty decent, you know," she offers genuinely. Not a question, more a simple statement of fact . He nods once, probably because he does know. She's sure she's not the first female in a bar, or elsewhere for that matter, to tell him that he's good.

Has a feeling that she won't be the last.

She watches as the bartender slides a beer sloppily along the counter towards his left hand. She didn't see him order it and he makes no move to reach for his wallet. She wonders, bitterly, if he trades his guitar and his time for booze; wonders if he's really that desperate.

"So, what'cha doin' here?" His question throws her, she thinks there's an implied _besides to see me_ thrown in, but she had no idea he moonlights as a rock-star when he's not on shift at the hospital and tonight couldn't be any _less_ about him if it tried. Not for her anyway.

"It used to be a tradition of sorts... " she confesses, eyes on the cubes of ice in her glass, voice catching more than a little at the back of her throat, "... my friends and I came here every Christmas Eve, it was a little different back then... or..." she considers pragmatically and with a quick lift of her shoulders, "... maybe it just felt different, maybe it was exactly the same as it is now..."

"So..." he glances around pointedly while she pretends, desperately, not to notice, "... where are they tonight?"

It's a reasonable question, she knows this. She shrugs her shoulders again, attempts a convincing calm that she absolutely does not feel, and elects for the truth. "Same place your friend is, I guess... Calvary Cemetery, well, except for Soph., she was cremated. Her ashes are in the Pacific..." He at least has the decency to lower his head a little, "... is it still a tradition when you're the only one left to do it?"

"I, ah, yeah, I guess so," he offers with a nod, and she's grateful for the lie, "I'm sorry..."

"What for?" she retorts, stung. "You didn't get wasted and smear them all over the pavement out there with your SUV..."

People are always sorry for things they didn't do. She wonders, suddenly, if he's ever as sorry for all the things that he _has_ done.

"Yeah, sorry-" he snares himself in a trap she hadn't intended to set, darts his chin up and lets his eyes catch hers for the first time, offers her the ghost of a grin. "Oops..."

Something in her chest pops. Tonight is definitely not going to plan.

* * *

She sees him take a deep breath, it sits him a little straighter on his stool. She feels tiny next to him. Small and insignificant. It puts her on the offensive. "So, I never pegged you as the 'John Mayer wanna be' type..."

He shrugs one shoulder casually, unperturbed, "I need the money. Plus, I knew the owner back home when I was a kid, he helps me out, I help him out." She sees his eyes slide towards her, though his head remains stoically straight, "... besides, hot chicks dig it..."

She glances pointedly at the three middle aged guys seated around a low table closest to where his guitar is propped and nods, "Yeah, I can see that..."

He laughs softly and the sound, unfamiliar and rare, echoes in her ears.

"I never pegged you as the 'get drunk and wallow in self pity' type..." He tilts his head back to drain the last mouthful of beer from his glass; doesn't look at her.

She's glad because his words are ones she's heard time and time before. "I come here to remember," she rationalises, even though he hasn't asked her to, "then I drink to forget. Look around you, the names may change, the days may be different, but the motivation still remains the same. Thought you of all people would understand that..."

"Me of all people? What's that supposed to mean?" He's defensive, perhaps rightly so.

The scotch is blunting her judgment, she's still just enough this side of _drunk_ to know that. "Forget it, it means nothing, it's _supposed_ to mean nothing..."

"So, you've been through some shit-"

"Some _shit_?" She almost chokes on her words because holding your best friends internal organs in place while she bleeds out over your hands and down into the knees of your jeans while every medical fact that you've ever learned drains away with her is not _some shit_, "What, you think you and your friends hold a monopoly on tragedy?"

"Screw you," he bites back, eyes flashing. "You have no idea..."

"Yeah, well... neither do you, jerk..." She adds the pathetic insult to make herself feel better. It fails miserably.

There's a lull between them, comfortable despite where the conversation went, and she wonders, idly, when they got so good at being complete bitches to one another.

* * *

"Do the others know you do this?" She rounds out the words through a mouthful of scotch, lifts her fingertips to her lips to keep from dribbling the liquid down her chin. She wonders, briefly, if she should maybe switch to water; knows, almost immediately, that she won't.

"Do the others know _you_ do _this_?" he echoes with emphasis.

"What am I doing?" She narrows her eyes at him, there is murmured background noise surrounding them now, a low humming buzz. They, whoever _they_ are, have replaced his music with a static-y radio station that keeps on fading in and out, out and in, in and out...

"Hiding out here, getting drunk by yourself. On Christmas Eve no less. It's a bit pathetic..."

"Lucky you're here then..." she nods sharply, as though it's obvious even though it's not, and raises her hand in the direction of the bartender who pours without even asking her what she wants. Rinse and repeat.

"Yeah, lucky," he echoes and the sarcasm she's expecting doesn't arrive. She thinks maybe he might even mean it.

* * *

He plays another set.

She listens, despite fervored intentions not to. He's actually really good, even better than she first thought. Raw and more than a little rough. Exactly how she feels.

The artists he covers don't really surprise her, but his song choices do. '_Kody_', '_A Long December_', '_From Yesterday_', '_Sweet and Low_'. There are others that she vaguely recognises, some that she doesn't know at all but suddenly wishes that she did.

She reads more into their brooding lyrics than he probably ever means anyone to but, at the same time, she realises that she probably never even comes close to the truth.

He finishes with '_Piano Man_', precedes it with an apology for any words he gets incorrect and a disclaimer about how he knows he's not playing the piano but the sentiment is still the same and he doesn't think that it'll matter to the "hot chick at the bar, oh and, by the way, merry christmas..."

She flushes, blames the scotch, intently studies the chipped nail polish on her thumb.

* * *

At three minutes passed one am she gathers her coat to leave. The world shifts as she stands, doesn't quite settle again as she pushes towards the doors and out into the snow, falling like ash onto her outstretched palms.

She crosses the road to complete her pilgrimage, doesn't even bother to check for traffic first because experience tells her she'll be spared if tragedy strikes.

There are footsteps behind her, they're hurried and confused, perhaps even jogging to catch up. She kneels in the gutter silently, doesn't have the fortitude to explain _why_ just yet.

"Merry Christmas, Soph...." Whispered.

"You okay?" he's at her shoulder, breathless, worried.

She nods as she speaks, because it's the truth. She is. "It was raining. Her blood washed down there," she points to a sewer grate, runs the tip of her finger along the rusted metal, "I think I lost some pieces of me down there, too..." then she laughs, because the scotch has made her morbid and she has Alex Karev's jacket around her shoulders and the look on his face is _priceless_.

She straightens, claps her hands once for effect, signalling the end of the freak-show she's just performed, "Right, let's go get a cab, Elton!"

* * *

They end up back at her place. She kicks her shoes off as they walk in, pulls her sweater over her head with one arm while the other drags his face down to meet hers. He's surprisingly compliant and she's, truth be told, a little disappointed. She'd been expecting a fight, or at least the illusion of one.

"Nice place," he breathes, but his eyes are closed and his tongue is on her teeth and she doubts he'd even know which room they're standing in.

They work their way futher into the apartment, clumsy and disjointed. Her elbow connects loudly with a door frame and when they pause he's no longer wearing the jeans she remembers from the bar.

"No roommates?"

She hears the words muffled, hot and sticky into the back of her neck. She shakes her head, _no_, can't be bothered explaining that her roommate moved out, that she recently lost her job, that she forgot to check a patient's airway, that the patient died. Can't be bothered with any of it...

His hands are erratic on her skin, panicked almost, and they've barely spoken two words to each other since they got in the cab. Usually she wouldn't care. Usually.

"What are you doing?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why are you here, Alex?"

"What?" He barks the word, indignant, and she smiles sadly. He's angry and he's almost naked. Buzzed from the free booze and a night of pretending (mostly) to be somebody he's not. Somebody he might have been once. Somebody he'll never be.

"You don't want this, you're-"

"Shut up." He moves towards her, reaches insistent fingers to her shoulders. She flattens her palms against his chest, not quite pushing but a barricade of sorts nonetheless. His hands drop to his sides and something about the way he's standing over her shifts; he deflates.

She uses the momentum swing to take a step back, meets solid wall behind her and slides down it until her chin is on her knees. She looks up through the tips of her lashes as he scrubs his palms across his face, presses guitar roughened fingertips against his closed eyelids.

She offers him something, his name as a question. "Alex?" And she's finally getting exactly what she wanted, only now she thinks she's realised that it was never truly hers to have in the first place.

* * *

She pads back into the living room with a bottle of wine that she's already opened and two plastic tumblers. His has 'I (heart) Elvis' emblazoned across the front and she's more than a little impressed when he doesn't even comment.

"Are you working tomorrow?" she asks, about thirteen drinks into the evening too late, and when he shakes his head, _no_, she fills his cup to just under the (heart), before switching to fill her own.

He leans forward, elbow on knee, and stretches his cup in her direction. She bounces her own off the rim of his with a dull, plastic clunk and giggles inanely at the sound.

"Cheers..." he drawls, raising the cup to his lips and smiling at her over the top of it. The 'I (heart) Elvis' at his chin only makes her laugh more and she's beginning to wonder if that was the point.

He takes a sip and splutters; wine and saliva spray the back of her hand and she licks it off without thinking as he bitches and moans about the fruity moscato that she's selected.

"Hey, owner of the apartment chooses the wine, freeloading _Piano Man_ shuts his cake hole."

"Just so you know, if I drink this I'm so sleeping on your couch tonight. There's no freakin' way I'm getting a cab back to the trailer so, yeah... just so you know..."

She laughs, genuinely, heartily, and nods out an _okay_, takes a moment to think that, yeah, maybe she didn't end up getting what she thought she'd been wanting, but that maybe, just maybe, she's ended up with something even better.


End file.
